Friday, August 17, 2007

I love the way Andrew Grant compares killing procrastination with elephant eating. After all, procrastination is the category 5 of “dragging your feet until they fall off” don’t wanna’s. According to Andrew, and I agree, it does not have to be difficult to beat this cloud that follows us around. (Ok, it follows me around too but I just didn’t want to be the only one out there.) Andrew continues with Part II:

Tip #4. Chunk it down. As someone once said, you can’t eat an elephant in one bite, but you can eat it, one bite at a time. So step 4 is to define those bites. In our example, Bite 1 is “go to the store”. Bite 2 is “buy the crates”. Bite 3 might be “clear the contents of the small area directly under the stairs, sorting it into the appropriate crates and throwing out what I no longer want” . Note down all the little bites on your goal map, but take care not to fall back into ‘pencil sharpening mode’ again and spend all night on your ‘Bite chart”.

Tip #5. Take the first bite. This is the toughest one of the lot. Get in the car, get down to store and buy those crates. It’s called taking action and is the stage where most people fall right down in their carefully mapped-out tracks.Tell yourself that you’re only going to do this one thing, focus entirely on that and get it done.

Tip #6. Review and reward. Once you’ve done it, take a tiny break and review progress. When you get back from the store with your new crates, go back to your goal map, cross off Bite 1 and give yourself a little pat on the back.You have taken action and you deserve recognition. Don’t get carried away, though; you’re not a Nobel prize winner yet.

Tip #7. Eat the rest. After your brief review and reward break, transfer your focus to Bite 2 and take some more action. Do it; review and reward again; then take Bite 3 and so on. Don’t worry, you won’t be constantly stopping and starting.

I guarantee that you’ll feel so good about yourself after two or three bites that you won’t want to stop and you’ll be so thrilled with progress that the whole job will be finished before you know it.Try this seven step technique next time you are stuck in reverse and you’ll soon see that procrastination is a pathetically weak enemy, that you can beat with your eyes closed.